The inventive concept relates to methods of manufacturing semiconductor devices, and more particularly, to a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device having an active region of a varying width.
As semiconductor devices become more highly integrated and a circuit configurations of the devices become more complex, the shape (footprint) of an active region such as a PMOS region and/or an NMOS region in which transistors are disposed is diversifying. As a result, there have been made many attempts to form a polygonal active region that breaks away from an existing tetragonal active region. However, a corner of the active region, unlike what was intended at the time of a layout design, is not accurately formed and a corner rounding phenomenon where a corner becomes rounded may occur.
This corner rounding phenomenon causes a serious error in an actual semiconductor device. That is, a standard cell disposed near an active region of a rounded corner may not operate and an electrical short may occur between the standard cell and other standard cells or between the standard cell and a conductive line. Thus, it is very important to prevent a corner rounding phenomenon from occurring in an active region especially one whose width varies along the direction of its length.